Highland Park ISD Uses Attorney to Hide Information from the Public

In 2015, parents of students in Highland Park ISD wrote a letter to the district giving details of an embezzlement scheme that was funneling cash payments intended for the district’s Tennis Center to certain district employees. A high-level employee later resigned, alleging that the director of the multimillion-dollar Seay Tennis Center facility was directly involved. As he described it, the plot involved kickbacks, threats, and coverups for years.

The district’s own financial statements show the scheme was potentially costing the district more than $1 million per year. Yet no one has been prosecuted or received even a reprimand.

A critical accounting report that the district ordered in 2019 could shed light on this scheme and even potentially reveal who was involved in the coverup.

The Texas Public Information Act makes that report public information because Texans “do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know.”

Under the Texas Public Information Act, the accounting report produced by Whitley Penn is public information and the district must release it. That’s why the Texas Public Policy Foundation requested that the district publish the report.

But the district has refused to release it, claiming attorney-client privilege. The district is cleverly attempting to exploit a loophole in the public information act—it did not order the report directly, but instead asked an attorney to hire Whitley Penn.

The report was produced by accountants at Whitley Penn and analyzed the accounting practices of the Seay Tennis Center at the exact time that this scheme run by a few employees was reaching its climactic conclusion. The report was produced for the district, paid for by the district, and the conclusions given to the district—but the district insists that the entire accounting report is really just legal advice from its attorney.

That argument doesn’t hold water, and that’s why the Texas Public Policy Foundation sued the district to release the report. Shockingly, the courts have sided with the district, so far.

Justice Lewis, a judge at the Court of Appeals went so far as to say her hands were tied, even though this case illustrates the “dangers and absurdities” of the court’s decision.

The problem comes from In re City of Georgetown, a case from 2001 in which the Texas Supreme Court said that attorney-client privilege can apply in the public information context. In that case, then-Supreme Court Justice (and now Texas Governor) Greg Abbott warned that local government agencies (like school districts) could claim privilege and that the “legislative policy of public access to information is thwarted.” Then-Justice Abbott was right, but his warning went ignored, and has since been used as advice by certain bad actors in local government.

Since that case, numerous school districts across the state have abused this attorney-client privilege loophole to keep their investigations secret from parents of district students and voters in local school board elections.

For example, El Paso ISD recently hired a lawyer to investigate hazing allegations on the football team. The district released its version of events but claimed attorney-client privilege for the real investigation. Parents of the football players have been denied the right to know if the hazing was sexual in nature (as some reporting claimed), or if their student was involved. Like Highland Park, El Paso hired an attorney to gather basic facts, just so it could hide information that is made public by law.

Similarly, in Laredo last year, the United ISD fired its superintendent related to sexual harassment allegations. The district refused to release its investigation, claiming attorney-client privilege. The result is that parents of Laredo public school students don’t know the extent of the harassment, who was harassed, and who else may have been involved. They only have the district’s word that the problem has been handled. Just like Highland Park, United ISD hired an attorney to gather basic facts, just so it could hide information that is public by law.

This simply can’t continue. The Texas Public Policy Foundation recently filed a Petition for Review asking the Texas Supreme Court to give us the chance to show why In re City of Georgetown goes against the principles of openness in the Texas Public Information Act, and why its bad for Texans.

I’m an attorney, and I know how important attorney-client privilege is for genuine communications between attorney and client. The school district’s abuse of this attorney-client privilege loophole to hide core public information from its own parents is a twisting of this important privilege that must be stopped.